Wicked Game
by Chrystler
Summary: Short, not so sweet, Angel POV. Post- WITW. The fall won't kill you but it can still be torture.


Title: Wicked Game  
  
Author: Chrystler  
  
Disclaimer: The following characters are the property of Joss Whedon, David Greenwalt, Mutant Enemy Productions, 20th Century Fox, etc., etc. They are used without permission, intent of infringement or expectation of profit. `Wicked Game' is by Chris Isaak  
  
Summary: Short, not so sweet, Angel POV. Post- WITW. The fall won't kill you but it can still be torture, especially when you don't want it.  
  
Rating: PG-15 for minor language issues.  
  
Spoilers: `Waiting in the Wings'  
  
Author's Notes: I hate songfics. They are the bane of fan fiction's existence. I don't read them. I never thought I'd write one. This is a songfic. Why? I have no idea. I'm working on another more substantial piece, but the damn song got stuck in my head, got mixed up with Angel angst, and wouldn't budge until I let this tumble out. Why I am posting here? Good question. It's not great, but there are parts I like. And you can't deny - love is wicked. :) Why should you read it? Even better question. Umm... read it then you tell me. g  
  
Distribution: I'm not sure why anyone would want it, but if you do please ask first anyway.  
  
Feedback: If you want to tell me how lame songfics are leave a message at chrystler_wolf@yahoo.co.uk  
  
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***The world was on fire and no one could save me but you/ It's strange what desire will make foolish people do***  
  
It was never this way with her. She gave of herself so sweetly. With such simple honesty, such childlike faith. I dreamt of her because she was comfort, because she was the sunlight I could never touch distilled into a delicate blonde vase. Her phantasmagoric self flowed liquid honey upon the hellfires of my soul. She was an apparition of the innocence I had so wilfully destroyed. She danced tantalising promises of a Paradise Regained across the ever-shifting, hostile landscape of my pitted, charred psyche. She was a beautiful golden chimera, slipping through my dreams and altering the colour of my mind. It's not that way with you.  
  
***I never dreamed that I'd meet somebody like you/ I never dreamed that I'd love somebody like you***  
  
You never even blurred the edges of my sleep. Some days you would be standing right in front of me - I could hear your voice regaling me with tales of superficial adventures, I could trace the way the tones of russet in your hair shimmered as you animated your speech, I could wonder if the long flowing skirts and pretty ruffled tops were your way of reminding me of gypsies long past - and yet my subconscious remained blissfully unruffled by your presence. Still entangled in the soft amber web of spun sugar I wove for myself, I never felt the full burning blast of the furnace until... until I finally let myself fall from the hold of curling illusory tendrils. Until I mourned the death of that dream.  
  
And then, you glorious torturous bitch, you rose. A phoenix forged in flickering, scorching flames. And I was rendered powerless - weakened, helpless - in the blistering beauty of your thrall. No longer protected from the unbearable heat of your terrible, awesome reality.  
  
***I don't want to fall in love/ No I don't want to fall in love with you***  
  
It was never this way with her. I was ready, I was waiting. For her. Or someone like her. I loved her almost before I saw her. She was the flesh to give form to the intangible shadow of the redemption I glimpsed floating in the future. You? You're just flesh. Strong and supple, soft and smooth, firm yet yielding. A warm skinned magnetic force whose pull never diminishes. A heady scent in my nostrils I can never purge. A deep verging-on-dirty laugh I dedicate my days to eliciting. An intoxicating bottle of blinding smiling moonshine and God knows I'm a thirsty man. It's been a long time since I've wanted to drink this badly.  
  
I want you. I never wanted to want you. You've undone me, you dark potent witch. All the more powerful because you didn't need magic to weave your binding spell.  
  
***What a wicked game to play/ To make me feel this way/ What a wicked thing to do/ To let me dream of you***  
  
In the lifetimes I've lived, I've known many women. Too many, some might say. I thought I'd seen all the fairer sex had to offer. I believed I knew both ends of the measure, thought I knew how diabolical and how divine they could be. I knew nothing. You are my most terrible tormentor. I let you into my mind and you seeped unbidden into my heart, into my soul. You plague my every waking moment. You pour your living molten lava onto my chest, my hands, my face. I writhe in agony, but I can't bear the loss when you direct the stream of liquid rock fire out of my sphere of existence. Out onto the day lit streets or into the uncomprehending lives of others, even if those others are people I love too. My friends, my family. Jealousy is the most scarred and disfigured of all the ugly emotions. I'm aware it borders on sickness to be possessive of that which I'll never possess. Mirrors and window panes won't tell me how these feelings sit on me, and I've never been as thankful for  
that curious aspect of my state of existence as now.  
  
I never dreamt of you. Now I can't sleep for the sensual overload you inspire in my fevered imagination. The timbre of your laugh; the unbending strength of your blood and bone spirit; the light and shadows sparring playfully across the planes of your face; the dizzying arabesque, leaps and swirls of your endlessly surprising, idiosyncratic mind. A cocktail of virtue spiced with vice, decanted into a tanned, lithe, curvaceous vessel of steel and silk.  
  
It seems ridiculous now - a blind, misguided notion if ever there was one - but this all started because I thought you were safe. Because you thought you were safe. That's why you let me get so close. That's why you let me dream. You didn't think I would ever be free of my airy gossamer fantasies. Sometimes, when I catch your eyes by accident and am unable to keep the desire from surfacing in mine, I see your polished nails clutching desperately still to this delusion. You need to think it still.  
  
***What a wicked thing to say/ You never felt this way***  
  
You only want to be safe. I only want to not want you. Then we'd both be safe. But I'm too far gone, and I don't know if it's for better or for worse that you never even began. You are my most terrible tormentor. You are my most soothing salve. You are not frail of spirit like me. You aren't a brittle oxymoronic mixture of monstrous selfishness and dangerous self-destruction. Somehow you made me forget what I am but you never forgot yourself. I trust you. You'll save us both from the turbulent tide which has risen, boiling and churning within me, heated by your ferocious yet nescient flame. You have to save us both. So why is it that I long to drag you, drowning, down with me?  
  
***What a wicked thing to do/ To make me dream of you***  
  
I curse you for doing this to me. I curse you for the lust I don't see tingeing the affection in your gaze when you turn to me. I curse you for unconsciously showing me what kind of ignoble creature I am. I curse you for being so goddamn real. I curse you for not being her, because it was never like this with her and now she's gone. Blown away on the winds of time and change and instead you are everywhere, being bright and vibrant and dazzling. Making me blink with the harshness of your light and wince as your blaze sears across my lids. I curse you for reducing me to this, for the power you have over me. I curse you for being you. For the soft tang which lingers in the air of this dilapidated hotel, permeating the corridors and catching in my throat. For your beauty and your humour, for your dedication and tirelessness, for the patience and understanding you mask with a quick stinging tongue and an arrogant nonchalance. A nonchalance which you know is irresistible even as  
we go through the motions of rolling our eyes and furrowing our brows with disapproval. I curse you because I'll never be able to tell you all these things. I curse you for making me fall so hard and not even noticing. I curse you because the closer I get the more impossible it becomes to be near you. I curse you for my being cursed.  
  
I curse you because it's so fucking unfair to curse you for anything at all.  
  
***And I don't want to fall in love/ No I don't want to fall in love with you***  
  
It was never supposed to be this way, because it never can be this way. I don't want it to be this way and if I was ever in any doubt that you didn't want it to be this way, that doubt evaporated along with the spirits of centuries old lovers. There is a sliver of my soul that is terrified I've made you afraid of me, that one day soon you'll run and take away the furnace I've become so accustomed to basking in even as it scalds my dead flesh. I wouldn't blame you if you did. In fact, I'd probably help pack your bags and buy you your bus ticket, but the greater part of me knows my fear is groundless. You won't leave. Your time for leaving is long past. You'll stay, and continue to burn me in this agonising ecstasy until my better self is nothing but ash, and this fervid whirlpool you have created in me swallows the both of us, and all those we care about with us.  
  
***I never dreamed that I'd love somebody like you/ I never dreamed that I'd lose somebody like you***  
  
I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to fall. I see where this will lead. I see the hurt and the misery it will cause. I see that eventually these torrents will extinguish the very fire which fuels them, and all the defence I can offer is that I never saw it coming. As justifications for apocalypse-effecting behaviour go that's not much of one.  
  
***No I don't want to fall in love/ No I don't want to fall in love with you***  
  
I didn't want to fall. I don't want to be falling. But falling for you is one hell of a trip. It's brutal and bruising; it's cauterising and conflicting; it's sublime and saturating; it's dazing and devouring. It's all the intricate interwoven tinctures I tasted upon my tongue and lips when supernatural forces allowed me the dubious gift of a double-edged sword, a hellish heavenly glimpse of exactly what it is I'm missing. Welcome to my world, where the higher powers grant you miracles and guide your fate, and with the same indifferent hand they screw you, and screw you, and screw you. It may be no more than I deserve, but you, you blinkered brilliant siren, what did you do to deserve me?  
  
***This world is only gonna break your heart***  
  
I've played this game before. And although I never dreamt I'd play it with you, I still know where lies its wicked end. I didn't want to fall, Cordelia, because I know - you may burn me out, but I'm only going to break your heart.  
  
Fin. 


End file.
